Thou shalt not... be a 'meanie'

At what age would you think you have to start dealing with "mean girl" stuff with kids?  For us the topic came up in the 4's (a little early I thought... but you gotta address it when they're thinking about it, right?)

One girl in Lena's preschool class started acting mean towards Lena... I'm not sure what she did.  But it changed Lena from wanting lots of play dates with her to coming home all upset that she had been mean to her.  How to best respond to this?

I told Lena that she shouldn't play with her if the other girl was being mean.  I definitely think that everyone should be able to choose their friends-- you don't have to be friends with everybody, especially if they don't treat you the way you want to be treated.  But that you always treat people nicely, so she shouldn't be mean back.  (whatever being mean "means" when you're 4 and 5).  The girl isn't going to kindergarten with Lena so I thought the whole thing was over, but when we saw her at a birthday party this weekend Lena got all upset again.  She wouldn't say hello to the girl and the girl was staring at her across the birthday cake table.  I felt a definite preview of middle school.

It reminded me of a great story that I told at a summer Tot Shabbat this past week.  After a long rainy day and then the sun peeking through I wanted to tell a Noah story, and found the perfect one in a little story book I have called Does God have a Big Toe? by Marc Gellman.  The story is about the birds nesting in Noah's ark, and how the brightly colored birds are mean to the black raven and the white dove.  The raven makes a choice to leave the ark and never come back-- not sharing that he found land with the other birds who are stuck on the ark.  When the dove is sent, she finds the raven but decides to brave the trip back to let everyone know that land has been sighted.  When they don't believe her she leaves the ark in tears, to seek proof of the land-- an olive leaf.  The other birds finally think again about their bad behavior, forming a brightly colored bird-rainbow to guide the dove back to the ark.

A great story about choosing to do the right thing and treat others how you would be treated.  The brightly colored birds have a chance to make t'shuvah-- to repent, say they're sorry, and then do the right thing the next time.  They stop being "meanies" and put themselves in the other birds' place.  What a great way for kids to begin to think about how the other kid might be feeling, the beginning of empathy (which so many of us adults have trouble with too).